
“I thought you felt safe in Florida. Why have guns?” a visiting friend from Israel asked us. We do feel safe in Florida, especially as we watch the eruptions of Jew hatred in our old city. But the idea that New York City could become a hotbed of Jew-hatred was once far-fetched too. It’s exactly the “it could never happen here” feeling that has lulled so many Jews before me into complacency. We have not just been killed by our enemies in places like Israel. We’ve been killed by friends and neighbors, in Spain, in Poland and so on. Our guns say: not us, not this time.
There is no reason for a Jew not to be armed in 2024. So much of Jewish culture revolves around being the helper. We expect people to help those in trouble. We count on armed people to step in. When the call comes “someone should do something!” we don’t plan to wait around. That someone will be us.
“We aren’t ‘gun-people,’” some people say. There’s some pride in it. Who, me? Oh no, I don’t own guns, I’m not that kind of person. But unsaid is that the not-a-gun-person expects someone else with a gun to come and protect them at just the right moment. They count on police, security, military to come and help in a real crisis. The not-a-gun-person can never step up and stop a violent attack on someone, they can never protect others, can never be the hero themselves. They can save themselves, maybe, but they’ll never be the one that everyone turns to at a time of emergency. There’s something intrinsically anti-Jewish about this. We have an obligation to each other but the anti-gun Jew can’t meet it. That should be a source of shame not pride. You’re not just a not-a-gun-person. You’re a can’t-help person.
What I want is for my kids to say something else. Yes, we are gun people, actually. I want my kids to grow up shooting, to be good at it, to be comfortable with it, to know their role is not to wait for someone else. We’ll also deter. We send the most peace-bringing message of all: We own guns, we train with guns, we have an arsenal, you do not want it with us. We will help others, we will be the people that step in.
— Karol Markowicz in How I became a gun person
91 days.
I just posted a comment on another topic at this site which is incredibly germane to Jews: reality is a harsh mistress.
Tragically, Jews experienced harsh reality in Nazi Germany and more recently in Israel on October 7th, 2023.
It is my sincere hope that the Jewish people learn from those monumental mistakes and act accordingly going forward.